The advancement in the chemical industry has surely made life easier for us, however in a similar fashion it has also made life very difficult for the environment, on a global scale these industries are the prime culprits of air and water pollution of our earth.This has led to Global warming and situations where people can just get life-threatening diseases like cancer while strolling in the sun. So to answer our queries on pollution, emissions and basic chemicals we use in our day to day life we at Krishi Jagran conducted a live interview session with Faiz Siddiqui who is a chemical engineer by education and a passionate promoter of purely natural products by profession.
Faiz is also the co-founder of “Mitti se” along with his wife and a couple of his friends, which as its name suggests creates products like hair oil, face washes and soaps out of 100% natural products.
Read these excerpts from this exclusive interview!
What is mitti se?
As you can probably understand from the term “Mitti se”, my company is based on substances derived from the earth, substances that are natural basically, we want to replace the chemicals that we use on a day to day basis with their natural counterparts that are not so destructive or unsustainable. Like Phenyl for example something which is actually an industry-grade neurotoxin. However naturally when you have such values it’s quite difficult to actually do justice to such values, however, want to stick tightly towards our values more so in some ways we actually are not a business-oriented organisation but more of a nature-oriented one. so we are actually growing sustainably and slowly.
What are your views on pollution and the roles these factories and industries play in polluting our environment?
As you know we have the Gomti river in Lucknow and Yamuna river in Delhi and you must have seen that the Yamuna is full of foam, so when you see this do ask yourself where does this Foam come from? this foam comes from us we use a laundry detergent and soaps and they produce a lot of lather and foam and most of these are dumped in rivers this foam forms a layer on top of rivers and ends up killing the organisms living inside the river (Process of Eutrophication) by stopping the passage of sunlight and the transportation of oxygen and we also talk about the government and the policymakers but as people who utilize these products we also are contributors to this. So we as consumers should become conscious about the ingredients we are using in our day to day life and fix our lifestyles too if we want to leave a healthy planet for the upcoming generation.
People nowadays while washing their dishes and clothes can see some chemical leftover residue on their dishes clothes etc so what basically are these substances, can you give us an insight on this?
The most used chemical substance in these products are Linear alkyne benzene Sulphonate and sodium lauryl sulphate and Synthetic agents these ingredients are dangerous in nature however people are still using them which is a sad reality. Secondly, I want to talk about the water we waste just to wash away the foam generated by these products, just to wash away the foam a person needs to use 1- 2 litres of water every day this when multiplied by the number of people living in India really does give us a scary picture about the amount of water we are wasting just to wash away the foam.